Photo from State Library of Louisiana: Photography Collection
James William Brown, Jr. was born in Bogalusa in 1947, but later took the name Komunyakaa in honor of his grandfather. He grew up poor in the Conservative rural South at the beginning of the civil rights movement. From an early age, Komunyakaa was an avid reader but at that time, the public library in Bogalusa did not admit African Americans. His mother bought him encyclopedias an a Bible. He was fascinated with James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name, which he borrowed repeatedly from his church library. In 1969, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam as a war correspondent for The Southern Cross, the military newspaper. He earned a Bronze Star for his service.
After his military service, Komunyakaa attended college on the G.I. Bill, earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado. It was there that he began writing poetry in a creative writing class. He went on to complete master’s degrees at Colorado State University and the University of California, Irvine. While in grad school, he published two chapbooks, Dedications & Other Darkhorses (1977) and Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979). His first book of poetry was published in 1984. Copacetic was a collection of autobiographical poems that drew from childhood experiences in Bogalusa and on deep-rooted traditions of jazz and blues in New Orleans. From 1985 to 1996, he taught English at Indiana University Bloomington.
He earned critical success with his collection of poems titled Dien Cai Dau in 1988, about his experiences in Vietnam. In 1994, he published Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the poetry world. Komunyakaa is currently a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Profile and poetry from Poetry Foundation.
Warhorses by
This powerful collection of Yusef Komunyakaa's poetry delves, with his characteristic allusiveness, intelligence, and intensity, into an age of war and conflict, both global and internal, racial and sexual. "Sweetheart, was I talking war in my sleep / again?" he asks, and the question is hardly moot: "Sometimes I hold you like Achilles' / shield," and indeed all relationships, in this telling, are sites of violence and battle. His line is longer and looser than inTabooorTalking Dirty to the Gods, and in long poems like "Autobiography of My Alter Ego" he sounds almost breathless, an exhausted but desperate prophet. With the leaps and improvisational flourishes of a jazz soloist, Komunyakaa imagines "the old masters of Shock & Awe" daydreaming of "lovely Penelope / like a trophy."Warhorsesis the stunning work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who never ceases to challenge and delight his readers.
Testimony, a Tribute to Charlie Parker by
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa is well known for his jazz poetry, and this book is the first to bring together the verve and vitality of his oeuvre. The centerpiece of this volume is the libretto "Testimony." Paying homage to Charlie Parker, "Testimony" was commissioned for a radio drama with original music by eminent Australian composer and saxophonist Sandy Evans. Remarkably rich and evocative, encompassing a wide range of musical energy and performers, this moving affirmation of Parker's genius became a milestone in contemporary radio theater. Twenty-eight additional poems spanning the breadth of Komunyakaa's career are included, including two never previously published. Accompanying the poems are interviews and essays featuring Komunyakaa, Evans, radio producer Christopher Williams, jazz critic Miriam Zolin, jazz writer and editor Sascha Feinstein, and musical director, Paul Grabowsky. Sascha Feinstein writes the foreword. Check for the online reader's companion at testimony.site.wesleyan.edu. (This edition does not include any audio.)
Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa by
Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa brings together over two decades of interviews and profiles with one of America's most prolific and acclaimed contemporary poets. Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947) describes his work alternately as ""word paintings"" and as ""music,"" and his affinity with the visual and aural arts is amply displayed in these conversations. The volume also addresses the diversity and magnitude of Komunyakaa's literary output. His collaborations with artists in a variety of genres, including music, dance, drama, opera, and painting have produced groundbreaking performance pieces. Throughout the collection, Komunyakaa's interest in finding and creating poetry across the artistic spectrum is made manifest.For his collection Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, 1977-1989, Komunyakaa became the first African American male to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Through his work he provides keen insight into life's mysteries from seemingly inconsequential and insignificant life forms (""Ode to the Maggot"") to some of the most compelling historical and life-altering events of our time, such as the Vietnam War (""Facing It""). Influenced strongly by jazz, blues, and folklore, as well as the classical poetic tradition, his poetry comprises a riveting chronicle of the African American experience.